Two Justice Systems: Manafort vs. Rangel

RUSH: Here’s Marianne in southwest Pennsylvania. Great to have you. I’m glad you waited. Hi.

CALLER: Thank you for taking my call, Rush. I’ve enjoyed your show for so many years.

RUSH: Thank you.

CALLER: First time I ever got to call in. I have a question. I seem to remember — with the Paul Manafort money deal offshore thing that they’re accusing him of — didn’t Charlie Rangel have some kind of a money problem offshore with the IRS and so forth?

RUSH: Oh-ho! (Snort!) He had on-shore money, offshore money, a different bank account. Hell! You’re absolutely right. Your memory is spot on with this. Yes, he did. He even had a share of a condo down in the Dominican Republic. They caught him asleep on the beach in his swim trunks one day. Oh, it was a… I’m telling you, Marianne, it was not a pleasant sight.

CALLER: (chuckling)

RUSH: He was on the beach out in front of one of these condos. Yeah, he was squirreling away money left and right. You’re exactly right. They didn’t do anything to him ’cause he’s… They just didn’t do anything to him.

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: The only reason they’re going after Manafort is the DOJ… Marianne, do you know that these charges aren’t new? The Department of Justice some time ago looked at all of this and decided to not pursue it. This would not be happening if Manafort had not worked for Trump for a hundred days. Mueller has to have something to show for all of this investigation, and he’s been hoping Manafort would flip. By the way, an update on the trial.

Rick Gates, who was to be the star witness (he flipped on Manafort), has finished his prosecution testimony, and the cross-examination of him is gonna begin this afternoon. That could be interesting. The judge in this case, T. S. Ellis, has no tolerance for these prosecutors. He continues to upbraid them. Yesterday, he got mad that the prosecutor wasn’t looking at him during the motion. He said, “Look at me!”

He has really given these guys grief, because he knows what this is. He told Mueller in a pretrial hearing, “You don’t care about this guy. You’re just using this guy to get Trump. I know what’s going on here in my courtroom.” He also knows that many of the prosecutors on Mueller’s team have ties back to Enron task force, and that bunch of lawyers from the DOJ was upbraided and investigated for misconduct. So he’s very aware what’s happening here, and the jury is hearing much of what he’s saying to ’em.